Search

As a rule, employees make an indefinite-term employment contract, while a fixed-term employment contract is used as an exception, only in circumstances that justify it. However, due to the process od globalization and financial destabilization, a fixed-term employment contract has become the most widespread type of employment contract. On that note, not only is the standard contractual model being broken, but flexibilization is also being asserted along with it as a new means of fighting the unemployment. Namely, flexibilization in its definition implies a different employment outline and expansion of atypical contractual arrangements. Hence, the subject of this paper will be the analysis of fixed-term employment contract in comparative law, bearing in mind all the differences in national legal systems regarding the conditions of making the contract, the maximum number of successive contracts and the total duration of the contract. Aside from that, the paper will list the situations in which is allowed to make a fixed-term employment contract in domestic law, as well as the issue of time limitation of the contract.

In this paper, the author analyses the ways in which the claims of employees in bankruptcy proceedings against their employer are protected. The first part of the paper discusses various modalities of protection that are applied alone or in combination with other means, all in order to provide a better protection framework for employees in bankruptcy. The central part of the paper is dedicated to the issue of the effectiveness of the Serbian protection system, which is measured by the number of settled claims of this type for creditors in bankruptcy proceedings, i.e. the number of upheld claims before the Solidarity Fund. In order to achieve the desired goal, it is necessary to place the protection of employees' claims in a broader context, which implies the harmony of the institutes of labour and bankruptcy law. As this is not the case in Serbia, the author points out a number of problems that arise in practice as a result, which were identified through interviews with employees of the Solidarity Fund and an analysis of reports on the work of this institution published since its establishment. At the very end, a comparative review shows that labour law mechanisms for the protection of employees are limited, and that, in that sense, expanding them to employers who have not initiated formal bankruptcy proceedings could be considered (with adequate adjustments). It is a unique theoretical proposal that deserves attention since the paper starts from the hypothesis that the system of protection of employees in terms of unsettled claims would be much more effective if they were more familiar with the work of the Solidarity Fund and if the way in which the Fund's work is organized was different.

Objective. To identify the type of the non-invasive ventilatory treatment for patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with respiratory status deteriorated by COVID-19 pneumonia, and in need of treatment in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).Materials and Methods. This cross-sectional study was conducted over a one-year period in the medical intensive care units of two hospitals. As the patients’ clinical condition deteriorated and the parameters of the arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis worsened, oxygen support was applied via a high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) or by non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV). According to the control values of the arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) and the parameters of ABG, the patients were enabled to be transferred between the two types of non-invasive ventilatory support. The primary outcome was the length of hospital stay, while secondary outcomes were the rate of intubation, the mortality rate, and respiratory supportfree days.Results. Out of 21 critical patients with COPD and COVID-19, 11 (52.4%) were initially treated with NPPV and 10 (47.6%) with HFNC. The ages (67±9.79 in NPPV group vs. 70.10±10.25 in HFNC group) and severity of illness (SOFA score 5 (3.5) in NPPV group vs. 5 (2.8) in HFNC group) were similar between the two groups. Switching the mode of respiratory support was more common in NPPV (58.3% in survivor group vs. 41.7% in non-survivor group). Patients treated with NPPV compared to HFNC had a nominally longer length of stay (15 (11) vs. 11.5 (4.25)), and higher risk of intubation (66.7% vs. 33.3%) and mortality (66.7% vs. 33.3%), but the comparisons did not reach statistical significance. Survivors had significantly longer Medical Intensive Care Unit and hospital stays, but significantly lower FiO2 (0.60 vs.1) and higher values of PaO2 /FiO2 (78(32.4) vs. 56.3(17.8)) than non-survivors. All patients were treated with corticosteroids, and the duration of treatment was similar between groups.Conclusion. In critically ill patients with COPD and COVID-19, both HFNC and NPPV were commonly used as the initial mode of ventilation. Switching to a different mode and adverse patient outcomes were more frequent in patients initially treated with NPPV. Survivors had higher values of PaO2 /FiO2 than non-survivors.

The effectiveness of hot-melt coating depends on its uniformity and the extent to which the surface is completely covered. Compared with solvent-based coating, spreading is more limited in hot-melt coating; thus, the coating uniformity is more affected by the process parameters. This study presents a new method for identifying and quantifying factors influencing coating uniformity. The proposed method facilitates the determination of coating-thickness distribution and non-covered surface proportion based on micro-computed tomography measurements. The proposed method is based on particles that have undergone hot-melt coating in a fluidized bed, and it is compared to common methods for layer-thickness determination. The influencing factors are quantified in terms of the dependency of coating uniformity on the coating amount and material. Material properties have a significant impact because stearin and palm fat create different coating layers. The proposed method is confirmed to be well suited for analyzing coating qualities.

The study presents a method to estimate the mass transfer rate during primary drying based on μ-computed tomographic measurements of a freeze-dried cake. The study was carried out in a defined setup in a lyomicroscope and confined geometry in which freezing occurred under homogeneous nucleation, and drying under mass-transfer-limited conditions. Pore size distribution, effective diffusivity, and primary drying rates of maltodextrin solutions at different weight concentrations (5%, 10%, and 20% (w/w)) and different cooling rates were determined. Furthermore, the effect of annealing treatment on primary drying rate was studied. Two different annealing treatments were tested, one for 90 min at −10 °C and another for 180 min at −5 °C. It was shown that solid concentration and annealing above Tg’ have the strongest impact on pore size and, subsequently, on primary drying rate. Therefore annealing represents a powerful tool to accelerate primary drying which is the most time-consuming step during lyophilisation.

Filamentous fungi are widely used in the production of biotechnological compounds. Since their morphology is strongly linked to productivity, it is a key parameter in industrial biotechnology. However, identifying the morphological properties of filamentous fungi is challenging. Owing to a lack of appropriate methods, the detailed three-dimensional morphology of filamentous pellets remains unexplored. In the present study, we used state-of-the-art X-ray microtomography (µCT) to develop a new method for detailed characterization of fungal pellets. µCT measurements were performed using freeze-dried pellets obtained from submerged cultivations. Three-dimensional images were generated and analyzed to locate and quantify hyphal material, tips, and branches. As a result, morphological properties including hyphal length, tip number, branch number, hyphal growth unit, porosity, and hyphal average diameter were ascertained. To validate the potential of the new method, two fungal pellets were studied-one from Aspergillus niger and the other from Penicillium chrysogenum. We show here that µCT analysis is a promising tool to study the three-dimensional structure of pellet-forming filamentous microorganisms in utmost detail. The knowledge gained can be used to understand and thus optimize pellet structures by means of appropriate process or genetic control in biotechnological applications.

The shape of crystals is an important property that has a great impact on their physical behavior. Examples are flowability, dissolution, and growth kinetics. Still, crystals are often described by a single size parameter. One reason is, that today shape information is still hard to measure. Additionally, only few modeling techniques exist that are able to describe the shape of crystals. In this chapter, these issues are addressed by accurately describing crystals with mathematical models, making the full morphological structure of crystals and their agglomerates accessible by stereoscopic and three-dimensional (3D) imaging techniques and using these methods to model crystallization while considering the complex shape of the crystals. In addition, artificial neural networks (ANN) are used to classify whether projections of crystals show single crystals or agglomerates. As a final step, a case study of a model of a mixed suspension mixed product removal (MSMPR) crystallizer and a hydrocyclone are integrated into the software platform Dyssol and used to dynamically simulate a crystallization process with recycling stream.

While particulate products are often characterized by their median diameter or the width of the particle size distribution, information is rarely given about the agglomeration degree of the product. To obtain this information, a tool combining image analysis and discriminant factorial analysis (DFA) was introduced in previous works. The accuracy of that method depended on the number of image descriptors selected, i.e. measurements describing each particle: few image descriptors resulted in rather poor classification while too many lead to an overfitting of the data. The aim of this study is twofold: First, we want to compare the classification accuracy of artificial neural networks (ANN) and DFA which, contrary to ANN, forms linear classifiers. Second, we want to provide an easy-to-implement procedure for generating particle classifiers. We used a qualitative measure called Proportional Similarity to test whether a subset selection of image descriptors was necessary to avoid an overfitting. The influence of the training set size was investigated as well as the transferability of the classifier on data obtained under different experimental conditions. The chemical systems used were l -alanine/water and adipic acid/water and the classes considered were single crystals, agglomerates, and gas bubbles. The results show that an ANN classifier provides higher accuracy and is more effective when only few image descriptors are available while DFA is simpler to create. Moreover, we show good transferability of classifiers trained on data of different experimental conditions. Based on our results, we provide guidelines for classification of particulate systems.

In order to fully characterize crystal aggregates, the orientation of primary particles has to be analyzed. A procedure for extracting this information from three-dimensional microcomputed tomography ( μ CT) images was recently published by our group. We here extend this method for asymmetrical crystals and apply it for studying the disorientation angle distribution of four potash alum crystal samples that were obtained under various experimental conditions. The results show that for all considered supersaturation profiles, primary particle pairs tend to have the same orientation significantly more often than in theoretical considerations, in which the orientations of primary particles are assumed to be distributed randomly.

The degree of agglomeration and the aggregate shape influence the quality of crystalline products and the ease of downstream processing. Studying the shape of primary particles in an aggregate can lead to a better understanding of the underlying aggregation mechanism. We present an automatic image processing procedure for identifying the shape, size, and position of each primary particle in microcomputed tomography (μCT) images of potash alum aggregates. Splitting an aggregate into primary particles is based on recombining watershed-transform regions, where concavity points are considered as indicators of correct segmentation. The shape identification algorithm uses the Hough transform to identify visible face normals and matches them to the set of face normals defined by a crystal model. In principle, the algorithm is applicable to other crystalline compounds provided that sufficient symmetry is present to determine the shape of a primary particle from its visible part.

Experimental accessibility of crystal shape is still limited today. We present a new method for extracting three-dimensional (3D) crystal shape from measurement data. The algorithm is demonstrated on data obtained by microcomputed tomography (μCT) for potash alum, although the approach is applicable to any 3D imaging technique and any faceted crystal. First, the crystal face normals are identified using a 3D Hough transform. In a second step, the relationship between the identified and all potentially arising crystal face normals is matched to obtain the relative orientation between the measurement data and the crystal model. The final shape parameters guarantee maintainance of the symmetry of the geometric crystal model and, hence, are compatible with common approaches to model the growth of multifaceted crystals. The procedure can be automated, which opens the possibility of evaluating full particle size-and-shape distributions, within the discussed limitations concerning crystal quality and sample size.

Uvod: Razvoj intenzivne medicine u zemljama u razvoju ograničen je nedostatkom učinkovite globalne infrastrukture koja podupire obrazovni proces liječnika i drugog medicinskog osoblja. Načela suvremene telemedicine mogu poslužiti kao alat za podizanje kvalitete liječenja, ali i kao "tehnika e-učenja ili drugog stručnog mišljenja". Cilj: Ispitati učinke jednogodišnje primjene telekonzultacija u jedinicama intenzivnog liječenja prema unaprijed određenim pokazateljima djelotvornosti i učinkovitosti. Materijal i metode: Ovo je studija presjeka koja prati smrtnost, dužinu hospitalizacije, brzinu stjecanja novih znanja, ekonomski aspekt i zadovoljstvo korisnika godinu dana prije i godinu dana nakon uvođenja teleedukacije na temelju CERTAIN platforme koju su razvili stručnjaci iz Klinike Mayo. Podaci su obrađeni deskriptivnom statističkom metodom i primjenom statističkih zaključaka te su prikazani tablično i grafički. Rezultati: Rezultati pokazuju smanjenje smrtnosti, skraćivanje prosječne dužine hospitalizacije, visoku razinu zadovoljstva korisnika, brzo usvajanje novih znanja i značajne ekonomske koristi. Zaključak: Telekonzultacije u jedinicama za intenzivno liječenje temeljene na prilagodbi postojećih resursa (posebno u zemljama u tranziciji) mogu poslužiti kao dobar model za poboljšanje liječenja kritično oboljelih bolesnika i za obrazovanje zdravstvenih djelatnika., Introduction: The development of intensive care medicine in developing countries is limited by the lack of effective global infrastructure that supports the educational process of doctors and other medical personnel. The principles of modern telemedicine can serve as a tool for raising the quality of treatment but also as an "e-learning technique or expert second opinion". Objective: To examine the effects of a one-year application of teleconsultations in the ICU on predefined indicators of effectiveness and efficiency. Material and Methods: This is a cross section study that monitors mortality, length of hospitalization, the speed of new knowledge aquisition, the economic aspect and user satisfaction a year before and a year after the introduction of tele-education based on CERTAIN platform developed by the experts from Mayo Clinic. The data was processed by a descriptive statistical method and application of statistical conclusions, and is tabulated and graphically presented. Results: The results showed a decrease in mortality, a shortening of the average length of hospitalization, a high level of user satisfaction, rapid adoption of new knowledge, and significant economic benefits. Conclusion: Teleconsultation mode in intensive units based on the adaptation of existing resources (especially for countries in transition) can serve as a good model for improving the treatment of critically ill patients and for educating health workers.